Medical director Kirill studies how to pack a medical backpack.
Photo: Dmitri STESHIN
MEET IN THE EDITORIAL HALL
How to understand that a decent military commissar goes to Donbass, and not a media bastard who profits from the conflict? Very simple. While he is driving, the head of this military correspondent sticks out of the open window, because it no longer fits in the cabin, and the rest of the car is stuffed with “humanitarian aid”: equipment, electronics, spare parts and “medicine”. And, of course, packages picked up by loving hands. The simple things in these shipments, in terms of temperature, differ from the environment, due to the warmth of the heart. And I’m not kidding. And, as at all times, it is customary to transfer them to the contact line from hand to hand, with “reliable and loyal people”, and not with the help of someone else’s courier and soulless. Such a package, a symbol of his reputation, not to deliver it is a shame and a shame.
At the end of May I returned from the Donbass to Moscow for a visit. This story began there, with a meeting in the editorial corridor. A colleague asked me to send a package for my brother, a doctor who is struggling somewhere near Maryinka. I just asked: “Big?”. But, the colleague waved his hands:
– What you! Tea, chocolate, power bank and other little things.
I asked not by chance. A place for an electric bike was already reserved in the car. New insights from CBO, by the way. As Alexander Khodakovsky, the legendary commander of the Vostok battalion, noted in a conversation with me the other day: “Now the main part of the fighting takes place in the rear.”
I was surprised, “Skif” confirmed:
– Yes. Artillery duels in the rear are often more intense than in the line of contact, in forward trenches and defensive positions. The enemy looks for warehouses, deployment sites, covers supply and rotation routes. And we do the same, with even more success.
I knew from personal experience that often the approach to the front line is a long and exhausting walk of 5-10 km through the steppe and forest plantations. With a considerable load on itself and a high probability of being “copied” by an enemy drone with all the consequences – artillery or mortar fire. The transport, as a rule, no longer calls such zones, it unloads the fighters in the last thick green. There are no more people arriving at the posts, dragging ammunition and water there with their last strength.
And you can do everything differently – jump into place in a matter of minutes on electric bikes. Rotated combatants will depart towards them. Transport is fast, silent, reliable. Obstacles are carried by hand. Of course, I agreed to take this device to the Donbass, although I understood that it would take up a third of the cargo compartment.
TWO “CASH” CALLS
I signed up with a military doctor, Senior Lieutenant Alexander Sergeevich, a relative of a colleague. They have already been transferred from the outskirts of Donetsk to the outskirts of Artemovsk. The fight there is hard, wounded by the flood. Sasha did not complain, I myself asked:
– Do you need something in medicine?
And he sent a list of 30 items. Nothing fantastic, ordinary medical consumables and you had to buy them to the max. THIS is never enough, she knew. I sat on the list and sweated, figuring out how to keep my promise. Calculate approximate budget. At that time two fateful calls occurred, with an interval of ten minutes. First, a fellow sniper called from the Zaporozhye direction. he was in a good mood
– Are you going to buy medicine? So that? They all give up! Yesterday my electronic warfare helicopter landed, it happens. They did not go looking: grass and mines in it. Then they immediately gave me five new ones so that I would not leave, I would not get bored.
A sniper with the call sign “Moskva” and his comrades in arms are now fighting in the direction of Zaporozhye.
Photo: Dmitri STESHIN
This is where I started thinking about things:
– What is this? Such Moscow hipster postirony?
“Moscow” did not deny:
– Yeah!
This conversation motivated me incredibly, there was nowhere to retreat. I went back to the list of “medicines” and the budget. To do? Advertise a collection to readers? And at that moment there was a second call, from the office of Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Trutnev:
– Dmitry, congratulations! You are the winner of our Far Eastern Arseniev Literary Prize!
– I never wrote about the Far East …
– Yes. But this year, we decided not to move away from the SVO and reward military correspondents. This is the time, you know?
Understood. He only asked for the amount of the bonus, and when he heard “five hundred thousand”, he breathed a sigh of relief. The award closed both intra-family problems and the purchase of a batch of medicines for the fighters.
Military correspondent “KP” Dmitry Steshin became the winner of the Far Eastern Arseniev Literary Prize. Photo: Yuri Trutnev’s press service
DOCTOR-PUZZLE
Everything could be bought with money, and now they were. She called her eldest daughter to him:
– Do you want to help us?
– Yeah!
– Dad buys and takes to Donbass, you bring parcels from delivery points. There will be many packages. agreed?
I sat on a monstrous medical puzzle with the Internet in my hands. So… subclavian catheters… Venous catheters of two sizes. What is better: the production of Mytishchi, Germany or China? Suction catheters. Surgical Needles: We take all available sizes. Now needle holders for them. Tranexamic acid in ampoules, removes blood clots, a very important drug, but it has a prescription and you have to go for it. Okay, I will somehow explain why there is no prescription and who is this medicine for. I’m taking out all the acid that was in some medical store. They will share laryngeal masks and endotracheal tubes – and “children’s sizes”, Sasha said there is a children’s hospital in her area of responsibility. The mother-in-law brings very expensive and rare medicines, the shelf life is another year. I also put them in a container, we will find someone to give them to them, in Donetsk itself.
The day before departure “Doc” Jasser arrives, a Syrian ophthalmologist, one of the best. A few years ago, the Russian army rescued his family in Syria, and Doc is helping in any way he can. For example, his clinic performs free operations on the eyes of wounded soldiers. “Doc” brings the so-called “paramedic backpack”, with the words “he finds someone who needs it and passes it on”. This backpack is, in a way, a work of medical art and is constantly being improved. Doc’s latest backpack was inspected by a legendary explorer with the call sign “Haram,” a guy who’s been injured so many times that even typing is inconvenient. I made a mistake with the numbers in that article: 5 bullets, 17 fragmentation! “Haram”, pardon the sad irony, also understood field medicine and was very appreciative of “Doc’s” work. He now he touches the real professionals.
THE MOST TERRIBLE THING IS TO SAVE INJURED CHILDREN
We met with Sasha senior in a small inconspicuous town of Donetsk in the so-called “Svetlodarskaya Dug” formed after the Debaltseve operation of 2015. The city is partially uncoiled by artillery and sad. Now the fighting has continued and the town has remained in a semi-military timelessness. One of the saddest, painfully hopeless spectacles, when there are no fights and everything is saturated with its consequences and memory. From here to Artemovsk there is already a stone’s throw, and we are going in the direction where our people still have Kleshcheevka. Sasha has been my reader since 2010, but she for some reason didn’t think I would come and delve into her needs in general. I tell you that such an attitude towards journalists is a metastasis of the “First Chechenskaya”, when 80% of the interviews were done by the enemy. And in the journalism faculties they were taught according to the “Soros manuals” that “a journalist does not take sides and in general is above the fight.” And that reputation developed by colleagues of the 90s has not yet survived, through which we endured, paying for the mistakes of the military of that generation …
We’re dismantling my cargo at the medical location. Sasha sighs with relief.
– Well, everything, I have a reanimobile!
I am incredibly happy with the medicines for my mother-in-law, rare and necessary. We immediately postpone something for the children’s hospital: tubes of small diameters, for example. Sasha, more to himself, comments:
– God forbid to save wounded children again, the most painful …
At the entrance to the frontline medical location.
Photo: Dmitri STESHIN
SEARCH FOR DOCTORS
We put the backpack “Doc”, the medical director Kirill comes and begins to study the style, explaining everything along the way:
– So, homeostatic tampons: some men clog them completely in the wound channel, so we can’t get it. You have to put it on top! As I guessed, here we have turnstiles and turnstiles. Unfortunately, the tourniquets showed little efficiency. A tourniquet is better, a regular red tourniquet.
The “paramedic backpack” is in some ways a medical work of art, after actual revisions, changes are made to its equipment from time to time.
What is happening from the outside is reminiscent of checking Santa’s bag, if you forget that behind every gift there is pain and suffering. I diligently capture everything on camera – this is an invaluable experience. For the last backpack, I received nearly three hundred letters: people asking for a packing list, and I sent it to everyone who requested. Doctors, volunteers, relatives of fighters wrote… I hope this shooting will be useful, and the list will be publicly available on our website (link…).
We drink coffee on the way. I ask Sasha and Kirill: what else can I do to help? Actually, I guessed: transportation. It is, but it is unknown how many cars pass by. There is no replacement car.
“They are especially sought after by doctors,” says Kirill, explaining with an unexpected example:
– How good is the backpack you brought? It does not stand out, the enemy does not recognize the medpack it contains, unlike the regular ones. With the transport for the evacuation, the same: they are eliminated at the first opportunity. In addition, there are places where roadsides are mined, for example, armor with cars does not move …
The boys sigh. And I understand, once they did not part. specific:
– Not evil?
Doctors confirm, not from evil.
In the evening, already in Donetsk, I have tea with the Novosibirsk deputy Rostislav Antonov at his rear base. He has had a humanitarian mission in the Donbas since the early days of the NMD. The base is unofficially called the “House of Friendship”, as in the cartoon about Cheburashka. I tell the deputy about today’s trip. Rostislav asks the doctors to clarify what else they need. I immediately get in touch and find out: oxygen cylinders for ventilation. There will be balloons. I am introduced to a mission driver who buys vehicles for the contact line, maintains them, and drives them to the Donbass. Feel my heart: there will be doctors and transport! I’m surprised, I didn’t expect it to be so simple. You just need to get into the right orbit – everything moves there, and everything is interconnected. And a year later, NWO, a variety of people ended up in this orbit, but they are all moving on the same trajectory: towards peace. And without victory, there will be no peace.
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